Spencer Uresk's Technology Blog

Macromedia Flex Pricing

More and more frequently, the success of a particular development platform depends on the community around it. Let's take a look at why a community surrounding your development platform is so critical:

- Exchange of Ideas

Often times, when I am doing development, I run into problems that are slowing me down or preventing me from doing something. 99% of the time I can find the answer, or at least a step in the right direction, by visiting forums, Wiki's, or other places where information is exchanged.

- Contribution to Code

As more languages utilize components, 3rd party components become more important. At a previous job, the major reason for going with JavaServer Faces (JSF) was the availability of 3rd party components that we could drop in. Flex utilizes components and could benefit substantially from 3rd party components being developed.

- Base of Programmers

As you get a larger community, you'll see a growth in the number of programmers for that platform. These programmers will enhance their skills by working on components and other solutions. If the market for the platform is not large enough, however, you'll see fewer programmers interested in it. After all, Flex has little value to the individual programmer who cannot afford the $15k license, and the number of available jobs will remain relatively small.

Macromedia recently changed their pricing for Flex to $15,000 for a single license and $29,000 for a four-CPU license. IMHO, anyone willing to shell out more than $10k for something like Flex is rather likely to have a big enough application that one processor is not going to cut it. So, $29k for the presentation layer. This prices a lot of companies out of Flex altogether. I was planning on using it for a few projects, but in light of the pricing, I must switch to Laszlo. This is too bad, since I feel Flex is overall a superior product. I know of several other companies who have invested time and resources into Flex, but have had to drop it due to pricing.

By pricing their software out of reach for many small and even medium-sized businesses, Macromedia is going to deprive Flex of a large and entuhsiastic community. This will make development in Flex somewhat less valuable (although I think Flex is quite useful on its own) and make it less attractive to potential clients.

posted by Spencer @ 3:21 PM